The Saint's Tragedy eBook

No one can have less interest than I have in claiming
poetical privileges for the clergy; and no one, I
believe, is more thoroughly convinced that the standard
which society prescribes for us, and to which we ordinarily
conform ourselves, instead of being too severe and
lofty, is far too secular and grovelling. But
I apprehend the limitations of this kind which are
imposed upon us are themselves exceedingly secular,
betokening an entire misconception of the nature of
our work, proceeding from maxims and habits which tend
to make it utterly insignificant and abortive.
If a man confines himself to the utterance of his
own experiences, those experiences are likely to become
every day more narrow and less real. If he confines
himself to the defence of certain propositions, he
is sure gradually to lose all sense of the connection
between those propositions and his own life, or the
life of man. In either case he becomes utterly
ineffectual as a teacher. Those whose education
and character are different from his own, whose processes
of mind have therefore been different, are utterly
unintelligible to him. Even a cordial desire
for sympathy is not able to break through the prickly
hedge of habits, notions, and technicalities which
separates them. Oftentimes the desire itself
is extinguished in those who ought to cherish it most,
by the fear of meeting with something portentous or
dangerous. Nor can he defend a dogma better than
he communes with men; for he knows not that which
attacks it. He supposes it to be a set of book
arguments, whereas it is something lying very deep
in the heart of the disputant, into which he has never
penetrated.

Hence there is a general complaint that we ’are
ignorant of the thoughts and feelings of our contemporaries’;
most attribute this to a fear of looking below the
surface, lest we should find hollowness within; many
like to have it so, because they have thus an excuse
for despising us. But surely such an ignorance
is more inexcusable in us, than in the priests of
any nation: we, less than any, are kept from
the sun and air; our discipline is less than any contrived
merely to make us acquainted with the commonplaces
of divinity. We are enabled, nay, obliged, from
our youth upwards, to mix with people of our own age,
who are destined for all occupations and modes of
life; to share in their studies, their enjoyments,
their perplexities, their temptations. Experience,
often so dearly bought, is surely not meant to be
thrown away: whether it has been obtained without
the sacrifice of that which is most precious, or whether
the lost blessing has been restored twofold, and good
is understood, not only as the opposite of evil, but
as the deliverance from it, we cannot be meant to
forget all that we have been learning. The teachers
of other nations may reasonably mock us, as having
less of direct book-lore than themselves; they should
not be able to say, that we are without the compensation
of knowing a little more of living creatures.